BTS: Blitz

IBC

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Your perception of war depends not just on when or where you were born but which level of social strata you inhabit. John Boorman’s recollection of the Luftwaffe’s lightening war on London in Hope and Glory (1987), was as an adventure. Untouched by war, Steven Spielberg drew on JG Ballard’s experiences in post-Pearl Harbour Shanghai for an equally exhilarating rites of passage in Empire of the Sun. British director Steve McQueen was born in 1969 and grew up in Ealing’s West Indian community, but his archaeology of World War II on the home front is coloured by a British Imperial destruction.

Blitz is a Brothers Grimm style fairy tale which follows the harrowing journey of nine year old George (Elliott Heffernan), whose mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) evacuates him to safety in the English countryside. George, defiant and determined to return home to Rita and his grandfather, Gerald (Paul Weller), in East London, jumps the train and walks back into a bombed out and broken down society.

The 12 Years A Slave director first started thinking about making a film about the Blitz in the early 2000s but it was only when he discovered a photograph while researching the BBC anthology film series Small Axe that he finally found a way in.

“It was an image of a small Black boy standing on a train platform with a large suitcase,” he says. “That image stayed with me in an almost omnipresent ghostly way, and I continued to find myself wondering who this child was, what was his story during the Blitz?”

In his capacity as official War Artist for Iraq in 2003 for the Imperial War Museum, the director gained first-hand accounts of war. That led him into deeper research of the Blitz.

He discovered that young firefighters were barely trained and terrified and that a West End night club called Café de Paris, was bombed in 1941, killing 34 people. Shortly after the bombing, reports arose of looters stealing jewellery and expensive items from the deceased clientele – authentic stories that McQueen wanted to incorporate into his screenplay.

The photo of the boy at the train station also affected the look of the film for French DP Yorick Le Saux AFC (Little Women; Irma Vep). “In every shot, we wanted the audience to feel the coexistence of life and death,” Le Saux says. “There was an image that we kept referring to where a woman is sweeping her floor, even though half of the house is missing, having been destroyed by a bomb the previous night. It was shocking to see people continuing their domestic work in such dramatic settings, but this was, of course, how they coped.”

Le Saux also points to the work of artist Henry Moore, who produced many drawings of Londoners sheltering during the Blitz. The Imperial War Museum provided access to many images from the era that had never been publicly released. McQueen and Le Saux also looked to archival footage from journalists and filmmakers who kept a record of the period. “We even looked at some pictures of the Ukraine war, to make the connection with nowadays and to realise that, almost a century later, it is the same,” Le Saux says.

Given that the production was working with a child actor, as well as undertaking a large amount of night shoots, there was a need for efficiency and reliability so the decision was made to film digitally  softened with vintage lenses and working with a palette soft blues, grays and lipstick reds of wartime colour photography.

“The idea was to create an environment that was representative of Londoners living in a permanent black out during the Blitz,” Le Saux explains. “The challenge of lighting and framing was to follow George intimately in his wandering, to empathise with him in all the adventures and things he encounters, and suddenly, to exaggerate a hostile adult world.”

The terror of the Luftwaffe bombardment from the skies is rendered abstract like white noise accompanied by Hans Zimmer’s pounding score. Editor Peter Sciberras (Power of the Dog) also worked from footage Humphrey Jennings’s 1943 docudrama of the Blitz, Fires Were Started.

With the London Docks almost unrecognisable since the 1940s (and with the capital being an expensive location to shoot) the production shot exteriors of a cobbled street and close-knit houses in Hull. The city’s transport hub (Hull Paragon Interchange) was a crucial element for the film’s departure sequence featuring children like George being evacuated. It had the scale of a London station but a visual freshness as well.

The production recreated the Café de Paris at Leavesden Studios and a flooded tube station on a stage just big enough to fit a 175-foot tube platform. The interior of the set was waterproofed and filled with water, rather than putting the set into a tank full of water.

Cinesite provided 140 invisible VFX shots focusing on the 1940s London environment and bombing sequences.

“The elaborate sets and locations built by the art department provided the framework for us to add in practical fire, smoke and water where possible, and for that practical effects work to inform the digital set extensions and pyro that were required to add the necessary scope in post-production,” says VFX supervisor, Andrew Whitehurst.

Alongside historical precision the brief demanded that the city felt “emotionally correct” within the drama, as Whitehurst puts it. “London, with its drifting smoke, dust, burning and burned-out buildings, required a careful and delicate balance of aesthetic, narrative and historical considerations.”

A shot towards the end of the film shows George running down a street as the camera cranes up and we see the destruction of the city beyond. Whitehurst explains, “In the foreground the building closest to us has recently been bombed out and the debris of the destroyed house is piled up. On location, the site of this recreated, bombed-out house had, in reality, been a building that was bombed, so there was a particular poignancy in recreating a tragic and turbulent moment in the history of that street.”

Brightcove sold for $233m, Akamai swoops for Edgio and Harmonic raises For Sale sign

Streaming Media

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Brightcove, the Technical Emmy winning video platform vendor, has been sold to app developer Bending Spoons for $233 million. It is the Italian company’s sixth acquisition this year and it is thought to be planning an IPO on the NYSE.

Brightcove’s most recent market cap was $143.98 million, which is notably lower than the acquisition price, reflecting the “substantial premium” Bending Spoons is offering to shareholders, according to InvestingPro. Brightcove maintains a gross profit margin of 61.65%, indicating strong underlying value in its core business which may explain Bending Spoons' interest in acquiring the company.

Brightcove was founded in Boston in 2004 starting out with a video player and expanding into a full online video services and monetization suite. Since its IPO in 2012, the company has focused on delivering video streaming solutions to a diverse clientele, including BBC, Showtime, AMC Networks and the LPGA.

Of late however it has faced challenges, reporting a net loss of $3 million for its latest quarter to November 4. The company’s financial health has been under scrutiny with its growth metrics considered underwhelming.  InvestingPro judged its financial performance to be “mixed”, with stagnation in revenue growth for the last twelve months (at $199.8m a slight decline of 0.22% year-over-year) a factor in the Brightcove’s decision to pursue a strategic sale.

Last month, Edenbrook Capital doubled its stake in the company to nearly 30%. Analysts noted at the time that Edenbrook might be positioning for a “value play,” anticipating a “potential market correction or strategic shifts within Brightcove that could enhance shareholder value.”

In August, the Milan headquartered Bending Spoons bought file-sharing platform WeTransfer. That followed the July purchase of digital publishing platform Issuu, the live streaming app StreamYard in May. In February it paid around $100m for the digital assets of Mosaic Group, which makes apps for mobile phones, and Meetup, a social network with 60 million members used to organise in-person and virtual events and gatherings. In January 2023 it acquired note-taking software firm Evernote.

Bending Spoons, which launched in 2013 and named after a scene in The Matrix, had a valuation of over $2.5 billion as of February. Its 39-year-old CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari told Reuters, “If and when we choose to pursue an IPO, we'll evaluate all reasonable options. Today, we have a slight preference for a listing in the United States, but our views may change.”

Marc DeBevoise, Brightcove’s CEO since 2022, said, “Brightcove is a storied and successful enterprise SaaS leader with 20 years of history, 12 of them as a public company. We have been a pioneer and innovator in the streaming market, from the early days of video player technologies to the leading video-powered engagement platform we are today. Today’s announcement will enable Brightcove to leverage the technology and market expertise of Bending Spoons and best position Brightcove to continue to thrive in the streaming and engagement technology market.”

The transaction is expected to finalize in the first half of 2025.

Akamai acquires Edgio assets

After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September select assets of CDN Edgio were picked up by Akamai last week. Edgio listed $379 million in assets and $369m in liabilities, according to court papers. At the time, its network comprised 300 Points of Presence (PoPs) worldwide, more than 7,000 ISP interconnections, and more than 275Tbps of global capacity serving around 900 customers.

Akamai was the winning bidder of the assets which included customer contracts from Edgio’s businesses in security and content delivery, and non-exclusive license rights to Edgio’s entire patent portfolio. No assets related to the Edgio network were acquired by Akamai.

Dan Rayburn noted that investment firm and Edgio debtor Lynrock won the assets for Uplynk and Interdigital, some of Edgio’s patents.

Edgio was only formed in 2022 after Limelight Networks acquired Edgecast from Yahoo and Apollo Global Management, with the combined company rebranding that year. Between 2013 and 2016, EdgeCast was a subsidiary of Verizon. Verizon acquired Yahoo! in 2017 and merged it with its Verizon Digital Media Services business (including the CDN service) to form Oath and later Verizon Media. 

In 2023 Lumen and StackPath quit the CDN business, selling their enterprise customers to Akamai.

For sale alert

One company with a ‘for sale’ sign to watch is Harmonic. The cable and video technology company initiated a review of its assets at the end of 2023 after posting a net loss of $6.5 million for its Q4. The company abandoned those plans in the spring, citing a soft buyer’s market, but a sale of some or all its divisions are now back on the table with 2.3% stakeholder Ancora Holdings urging the board Harmonic to explore a possible sale and maximise shareholder value.

Romanesque Capital, another a Harmonic shareholder, supported the call for a review aimed at a possible sale. Multiple cable industry experts have speculated to Light Reading that Comcast could make a good fit as buyer given the operator's reliance on Harmonic's virtual cable modem termination system.

Camerimage: “We have to be part of the change”

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A usually quite show dedicated to cinematography erupted into controversy around female representation.

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Now in its 32nd year, Camerimage festival in Poland holds a prized place on the Oscars awards circuit and is traditionally held in high esteem among cineasts, but remarks by its founder and director ahead of this year’s event have cast its future in doubt.

Marek Żydowicz had suggested that pressure to increase gender diversity at his festival was “a fanatical revolution that destroys the cathedrals of art.”

“Can we sacrifice works and artists with outstanding artistic achievements solely to make room for mediocre film productions?” he wrote in an op-ed that left no room for misinterpretation.

Blitz director Steve McQueen promptly pulled his participation from the festival’s opening night, followed by Coralie Fargeat, director of The Substance.

Actor and producer Cate Blanchett did not, choosing to fire back from within. At a public Q&A the jury chair of this year’s Camerimage main competition said, “We’re all part of the conversation. We can’t walk away from it. We have to be part of the change.”

The optics weren’t good given that the festival had controversially decided to premiere the western Rust on which cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot. Director Joel Souza, who was injured on the set, and Bianca Cline the DP who finished the film, were in attendance.

The film’s closing credits begin with the words ‘For Halyna’, followed by a question attributed to her ‘What can we do to make this better?’

Souza said that he and Cline tried to preserve every single frame Hutchins had shot in the final picture. He told Screen, “We’d recreate the set, recreate the light, recreate everything. It was a look that Halyna and I had developed together, and then a look that Bianca and I redeveloped together.”

Representation of female filmmakers

Multiple other professionals in attendance voiced their views. Hélène De Roux of Zeiss countered, “Ladies thank you all for coming. We are delighted to continue to help you build whatever cathedrals you want. Camerimage should be as happy for you to be here as we are to come here."

Wolfgang Lempp, cofounder of Filmlight said his company’s awards night for colourists, “We don’t have a women’s colourist award or a foreign language colourist award but we do recognise there is no level playing field in the real world. We unapologetically promote female participation. We would like to see more female colourists and DoPs and we’d like to see more women elected as presidents.”

Kate Reid BSC (Silo S2), said, “There’s been a lot of talk about the topic and I feel positive that things will move in a better direction. There will always be people who say ‘No’. Just don’t dwell on it. Be the best DP you can be.

Nancy Schreiber ASC (Mapplethorpe) said, “It’s not a fair world. There’s no diversity [in the audience] here in terms of other cultures. We just have to believe there are other people out there who accept we are competent and will give us a chance.

The 75-year-old added, “Besides being a women I got the age thing. Am I still walking?—Yes, I work out six days a week but there is ageism in our industry. Even white males are having a rough time at the ASC if they are of a certain age.”

Rachel Morrison, who was the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography (for Mudbound) was at Camerimage presenting her first film as director. The Fire Within, written by Barry Jenkins, is a sports biopic about Olympic boxer Claressa Shields who fought for gender parity in the sport.

“As a female DP, I know what it’s like to be in a craft that people do not picture women in, where it isn’t enough just to be good at your job,” Morrison said. “There’s still a tendency to have women tell only women’s stories. The industry thinks of women for rom-coms, or melodramas, and it’s the men who are given opportunities in action movies or sports stories. Cinematography still has further to go in terms of combatting the perceptions women face. For my entire career, people have been looking around for the DP and I’ve had to say, ‘Wait, I’m the DP.’ But it’s slowly changing.”

Lachman lifetime award

Honoured with a lifetime achievement award was the American cinematographer Ed Lachman ASC. He learned the craft working for the great European lighting cameramen Vittorio Storaro, Sven Nykvist and Robby Müller, before going on to shoot films with Werner Herzog (Stroszek), Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven), Wim Wenders (Tokyo-Ga) and Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich) and Pablo Larraín whose latest film, Maria, screened in during the festival. It’s a biopic of opera singer Maria Callas starring Angeline Jolie and was shot in Budapest (standing in for Paris) on 16mm and 35mm.

“It was very important for Pablo that we shoot in La Scala (opera house, Milan) itself because that was such an important part of her life. But it was very expensive. For just four hours it cost us $250,000 and I had to figure out a way to light it within the least amount of time, like 45 minutes. They wouldn’t even let us prep lights in there because they have productions going non-stop. All of that had to be done in the time slot we were allocated.

Lachman worked with the lighting director of La Scala and just a handful of Germany crew to light the auditorium.

“I knew we needed a stronger spotlight on Maria so we had that light resting in the elevator ready to go up to the lighting booth as soon as our four hours began. That was the most difficult thing for me to do on this film because of the tight time frame, the multiple scenes we had there and because primarily that scene is shot with Steadicam.”

AI and Cinematography

A session organised by the American Society of Cinematographers explored the growing use of AI tools like Runway for content creation and revealed a mix of feelings.

While open to the idea of generating storyboards to help with the design process, most seasoned DPs were sceptical and wary of using GenAI any further.

Catherine Goldschmidt BSC (The Last of Us) said, “I have dabbled with AI because I am interested in using it as a brainstorming tool but to be honest I got a little bit nervous because I feel like the prompts need to be so specific - and we've signed NDAs – that I was worried about putting that out into the ether. I don't totally understand what happens to it.

“As far as would I draw a moral line, I would worry that if I trained the tool to produce an image with such specificity and show it to a director that then I would be making what [cinematographers] then do on set obsolete. I'm sure that's a lot of people's fear in the room. It's a fine line between approaching it as a storyboarding tool or a jumping off point and copying. If all your references are other films then you can slip into just copying other films when what you actually want to do is synthesize [references] and shoot something that is singular, special and unique and unrepeatable.”

Salvatore Totino ASC (Spider-Man: Homecoming) said, “I do have some anxiety and fears about it. My fears stem from starting to rely too much on feeding prompts to AI that I'm cutting off my brain from actually going farther than it would have had I not settled for whatever it was giving me at the time.

“The part that I'm I have a hard time with is I'm asking a computer to try to visualise an idea or thought that I'm having. When I do a project I draw a lot of references from music, photography and films and also everyday experiences that invoke a certain feeling in me that I might then I might be able to translate to the visual image. But if I’m trying to give specific prompts to a computer then my brain is no longer invoking my emotions or sparking any of my own thoughts. The computer is going to give me a result but it feels like the end of a process not the evolution of your imagination.”

DPs turned director

Aside from Morrison, another garlanded DoPs screened their first feature film as directors at Camerimage. Rodrigo Prieto ASC AMC is a multiple Oscar, BAFTA and ASC Award nominated cinematographer, best known for Brokeback Mountain (2005), Babel (2006), Argo (2012), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and The Irishman (2019). For his directorial debut he chose an adaptation for Netflix of the 1950s novel Pedro Páramo by Mexican writer Juan Rulfo, which screened at Camerimage and on which he shared photography duties with Nico Aguilar.

“I had been thinking about directing because I do like working with actors,” Prieto said. “Also, this is a novel that I've loved since I first read it in high school. So when I got the call from [producer] Stacy Perskie that Netflix had bought the rights and they're looking for a director, it was an automatic ‘yes’ from me.”

“I spoke to some of my director friends looking for advice. The first person I turned to was Martin Scorsese because at the time we were together in Oklahoma prepping Killers of the Flower Moon. He told me to just make sure I stick closely to the original material because if not, [the producers] will kill you.”

New talent

In a session aimed at encouraging young talent into the industry, Jamie Ramsay SASC (All of Us Strangers, Living) said, “I grew up in South Africa where mentorship was not really a thing. When I did have the opportunity to be on set with older DPs I always declined. The reason is I wanted my style to be born completely out of darkness. I didn’t want my choices to be influenced by someone else. I’m not saying that’s the way it should be done. I wanted it to be born out of my own failures. Now I’m in a position where I can offer advice to the younger generation of DPs I find the process so rewarding.”

Kate Reid has just shot the series What it Feels Like For A Girl in Wales. She advised, “Try to choose the projects that resonate with you because then you are likely to find your voice. Shooting faces, even in corporate video and commercials, teaches you how to light. Treat every opportunity you get to work as an opportunity to learn.”

Lighting animation

Adam Habib and Jonathan Pytko the cinematographers behind this year’s animated smash Inside Out 2 shared their process working with virtual cameras and lighting

“Everyone has heard of the phrase ‘lights, camera, action’ – we have the same thing but the order is changed so it's ‘camera, action, lights,” Habib said. “That refers to three big production departments of the film – layout, animation and lighting. The challenge for us becomes how do we collaborate across the pipeline to create the cinematography of the movie.”

They begin with environmental lighting appropriate for the time of day of each scene. “We try to emulate live action techniques by using soft lights to create a night time atmosphere,” Pytko said. “Of course, being an animated film, we need to be able to break all those rules whenever we need to for visual purposes. So we have thousands of practical lights and then our main character (Joy) is also a light source. If you were to actually photograph a light bulb it would look very flat, so we’re break those physical properties to make her look like a shaped character.”

They talked about developing a ‘colour script’ which describes the relationship between colour, light and camera that is themed throughout the film. They painted scenes for colour references and also used movies such as Tim Burton’s Batman and Punch Drunk Love for other scenes.

 

 

Sunbelt Rentals / Doing the right thing

British Cinematographer

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Sunbelt Rentals champions sustainability in equipment rental, transforming the film and TV industry through innovative solutions and a commitment to eco-friendly practices. 

Sunbelt Rentals is the global leader in equipment rental. Its inventory and expertise span sectors from construction and civil engineering to live events and critical infrastructure. It keeps the film and TV industry running by supplying comprehensive camera, grip, lighting, and location services to studios, streamers, and broadcasters across Europe, the UK, and the US. As part of the FTSE100 Ashtead Group, Sunbelt Rentals firmly understands its responsibility to lead on sustainability, innovation, and business governance. 

“The strategic action plan that runs throughout our organisation is called Our Planet and it is a commitment to driving emissions down,” says Mike Pollard, managing director of film & TV at Sunbelt Rentals. “It’s inspired by a clear purpose: to transform lives and lead positive change across the rental industry to deliver a better future.”                                                                         

When it comes to a greener, more sustainable future, it’s not just about changing the big things. “It’s about everything,” says Pollard. “Even the details like moving to digital, paperless systems, to introducing water and energy-saving equipment into our depots and investing in electric, hybrid, and Euro 6 compliant vehicles.”                                                                                      

As a global company, Sunbelt Rentals has the buying power to not only invest in the latest low-carbon technologies but also collaborate with world-leading manufacturers to shape demand for the next generation of equipment. In the UK, Sunbelt Rentals operates the largest fleet of ultra-low emission or fully electric plant and power equipment and provides services to many of the leading television shows and films shot in the country from dozens of depots. 

BESPOKE BRANDS AND SPECIALIST SERVICES 

If you’re unfamiliar with Sunbelt Rentals, you will doubtless have worked with one of its bespoke brands. These include Manchester-based photographic and TV lighting specialist PKE Lighting and camera, lens, and grip hire firm Movietech, which operates from production bases at their new Wembley Facility and Great Point Seren Studios in Wales.       

If it’s lifting equipment you require, whether that’s Genie booms, scissor lifts, cherry pickers, spider lifts, telehandlers, or forklifts, then it is Alpha Grip or Media Access Solutions you need. Northern Ireland’s film and TV industry is catered for with Belfast-based Acorn Film & Video.                                                                                                      

These specialist film and TV businesses are combined with the knowledge and expertise of William F. White International (WFW), Canada’s iconic and largest provider of professional motion picture and television production equipment. Collectively, Sunbelt Rentals has supplied kit and facilities, sometimes custom studio builds, to countless productions including Spectre, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation to The Diplomat (Netflix), Mr Bates and The Post Office (ITV), The Crown (Netflix), How to Train Your Dragon (Universal), American Gods (Starz), and Good Omens (Amazon Prime). In August this year, Sunbelt Rentals unveiled its flagship UK facility at Victory Park North, Wembley, in West London. This 180,000 sq ft hire one-stop shop brings together Sunbelt Rentals’ Film and TV business with the company’s wider offerings, such as power, HVAC, and external training, ensuring an exceptional customer experience. It is also destined to be the epicentre for Sunbelt Rentals’ sustainable net-zero and low-carbon equipment solutions, featuring their clean energy and sustainable location services.  

“The Wembley facility has been designed to be as sustainable as possible,” Pollard says. “We are proud to have one of the largest LED and solar lighting inventories in the industry, helping productions save on fuel usage and cut harmful emissions.       

“In terms of green lighting solutions alone, we have seen kit lists from gaffers and DPs change massively over the past 18 months. Younger camera and lighting crews are quick to embrace LEDs, but more experienced hands want to see change too and are keen to rig with less fuel-inefficient equipment.” 

SUPPORTING THE INDUSTRY COMMUNITY 

Sunbelt Rentals also aims to support the industry through partnerships, training, and addressing skills shortages. As the Sunbelt Rentals lighting team locates in Wembley, it will create local employment. A new partnership with the Liverpool Film Office will see Sunbelt Rentals facilitating an ambitious programme of activity to help build a stronger, more diverse, and skilled screen workforce across the Liverpool City Region and support Liverpool City Council’s Net Zero goal.                                                                                                         

“Our goal is to not only enhance productions and support the local community, but also to create a positive social impact,” says Pollard. “The more we can put equipment and knowledge in front of productions, the more the dial will shift towards greater use of green solutions. “We spend a lot of time teaching, explaining, and demonstrating the practical benefits of working with low or zero carbon emission generators, for example. “Encouragingly, we are seeing a lot of push from the top from the likes of BBC, Netflix, and other big streamers, with whom we are working on green production initiatives. Change is happening.” 

CLEAN ENERGY SOLUTIONS FOR PRODUCTION 

Reducing your environmental footprint doesn’t have to mean drastic change or increased costs. Sunbelt Rentals’ Clean Energy Team is here to help every step of the way.                                                                                          

“Whether it’s creating a hybrid temporary power solution that combines battery technology with generators or exploring solar-powered technologies and hydrogen, we have the equipment and the expertise to assist you at every stage of your journey to clean energy.” Sunbelt Rentals’ range of green energy solutions includes Stage V generators, battery storage units, and energy management systems, which provide a more sustainable alternative to using diesel. All its plant equipment, lighting, and generators are compatible with fossil-free HVO fuel, which is proven to reduce emissions by up to 90%, helping productions reduce fuel costs and cut carbon. 

PIONEERING A HYDROGEN-POWERED FUTURE 

The company is helping pioneer a hydrogen-powered future too. It is partnered with Balfour Beatty in a project that will renew and improve 3km of Thames shoreline flood defences at Canvey Island. Funded by the Environment Agency, the project will protect thousands of homes, businesses, and infrastructure from rising sea levels brought about by climate change when complete in 2025.  

“There is a shared desire between Balfour Beatty, the Environment Agency, and Sunbelt Rentals to drive innovation and explore solutions that can accelerate net zero plans,” explains Pollard. “So, when the opportunity arose to trial a H2-powered fuel-cell generator, we collaborated to install this groundbreaking solution. Collectively taking a step forward to gain a deeper understanding about this zero-carbon fuel has the potential to help shape the future of our planet.” 

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER AND INDUSTRY APPLICATION  

Lessons learned at the cutting edge of technology by Sunbelt Rentals’ in-house engineering team can be quickly transferred to the film and TV industry as and when H2 becomes a viable and practical option. “The more we can learn and share knowledge about alternative fuels, how to integrate with renewable energy technologies, and how to begin to introduce them into applications in film and TV location and studio-based production—the sooner we can make zero carbon alternatives a reality,” says Pollard. But it takes a few pioneers and problem solvers to turn what-if into what-is.                                                             

“Our Sustainability Plan 2025 aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals,” Pollard says. “We are committed to creating social impact and achieving lasting legacies through our work, and we want to continue to collaborate with our clients, suppliers, and industry bodies like BAFTA albert to help innovate and shape the next generation of environmentally friendly film and TV production equipment.” 

Get Set Hire / Working towards a circular framework

British Cinematographer 

article here Get Set Hire / Working towards a circular framework 

Get Set Hire reliably and flexibly provides planet-conscious, top-quality, clean equipment to the film industry via low-carbon delivery. 

If the film industry is serious about transitioning to a sustainable industry, it has to end the destructive cycle of ‘buy-use-discard’ and work towards a circular framework, according to Paul Miller, founder of Get Set Hire. 

“Hiring, not buying, is an easy first step,” he says. “Our aim is to positively impact every production and the planet.” 

GSH is often offered end-of-shoot equipment as potential stock but rejects these if they don’t meet the company’s high standards. “All too often, ‘end-of-shoot’ means ‘end of life’ for that equipment,” says Miller. 

What sets GSH apart from other facilities companies is its commitment to extending the life of its hire stock with high cleanliness and repair regimes. “We took an early decision to avoid stocking the larger outdoor items like trackways and bowsers and instead focus on providing well-maintained equipment that the crew use and touch. It makes good sense for both the business and the planet to invest extra time and money to really look after our equipment and extend its useful life as long as possible. All too often, simple things like chairs and tables are considered uneconomical to repair and are left to deteriorate to their inevitable disposal point too quickly.” 

“Our own in-house workshop team ensures that all our products last as long as possible and are in top condition,” says Miller. “Our philosophy is always ‘reuse, reduce, recycle’.” When an item does reach the end of its life at GSH, it is either donated for use elsewhere or stripped down to enable its components to enter the recycling system avoiding incineration or landfill. 

Since 2012, GSH has been supplying productions of all stripes, beginning in the fast-paced, quick-turnaround commercials industry and expanding into film, drama, entertainment and photography shoots, fashion events and even outdoor events.  

“It’s in our nature to be reactive and flexible, and all our team members have a ‘can do attitude,‘”, says Miller. 

Embedded in the company DNA is a responsible and proactive approach to low-carbon delivery which includes measuring and offsetting operational carbon as a BAFTA albert accredited supplier. 

Leading by example 

Production managers and ESG supervisors will welcome the provision by GSH of a carbon calculator ‘information sheet’ along with each quote which makes carbon calculation easy and transparent. It is also an Industry Partner of Adgreen and supported Adgreen in creating its carbon calculator. 

The firm is a contributor to the Fuel Project – a report funded by Interreg Europe’s Green Screen and delivered by Film London, in partnership with sustainable business consultants Creative Zero. 

“Together, we are seeking a just and swift transition to decarbonised vehicles and mobile power units in the film industry,” Miller says. 

GSH is an early adopter of waste biofuel Hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) as a substitute for diesel and use certified waste HVO across its owned fleet. Its ratio of HVO to diesel is 80-20 and it aims to improve even on this. 

While some clients already prioritise low-carbon filming, others need more education. “Sustainability has become more of an issue but I’m often shocked it’s not higher up the agenda,” says Bryony Harrison-Miller, head of communications & sustainability at GSH. “But with more productions creating a sustainability officer role, we are starting to see the industry making positive change. 

“We encourage decentralised power as a new way of working on set. This is the idea that rather than one big fossil powered generator generating 100kWh, of which you use 20%, you hire a number of low carbon mobile power units and place them where you need them. There’s no need for extraneous cabling, you can swap them out as you go and you can easily monitor how much energy is being used.” 

Among the electric battery storage systems GSH offers are the 2.1kWh Instagrid unit which weighs just 20kg and is plug and play, and the easily portable 10kWh unit Wattman. 

Among its annual donations to carbon sequestering projects managed through Mossy Earth, GSH has donated over £30,000 to kelp reforestation and tree planting projects since 2021.  

“We have Sustainability Champions in each department who work together to keep making GSH more sustainable,” Miller says. “Our employees undertake regular training on sustainability issues to raise awareness in our own organisation and we actively use our sphere of influence to raise awareness everywhere we can.” 

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Camerimage 2024 report: The world’s premier cinematography festival faces headwinds

Redshark News

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Camerimage is the largest festival of cinematographers in the world but all the talk leading into the show last week was about the festival director’s remarks that the work of female filmmakers was devaluing the craft.

The words of Marek Żydowicz, who founded the festival 32 years ago, were laid out in black and white in an opinion piece in which he argued that the movement to include works by women filmmakers had gone too far.

“Can we sacrifice works and artists with outstanding artistic achievements solely to make room for mediocre film productions?” he wrote.

Naturally, there was huge push back from those attending – with opening night honouree director Steve McQueen deciding to vote with his feet and stay home.

Cate Blanchett, who is jury chair of this year’s Camerimage main competition, said, “We’re all part of the conversation. We can’t walk away from it. We have to be part of the change.”

The optics weren’t good given that the festival had already decided to premiere the western Rust on which cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot. Director Joel Souza, who was injured on the set, and Bianca Cline the DP who finished the film, were in attendance.

The film’s closing credits begin with the words ‘For Halyna’, followed by a question attributed to her ‘What can we do to make this better?’

That controversy was separate to the wider diversity and inclusion debate that prompted a hastily convened public panel session. Filmmakers including Oscar nominated cinematographers Mandy Walker ACS, ASC (Elvis) and Rodrigo Prieto ASC AMC (Brokeback Mountain) gave their response.

Walker admitted to encountering “a lot of conscious and unconscious bias” earlier in her career and says her presence as head of department on films is still a novelty. “I do find I’m still being judged,” she said. “Like many women I always felt that I had to give 110 percent and had to be brilliant to be otherwise, people would say, ‘women can’t do that.’”

Prieto, who shot Barbie for Greta Gerwig said that stories with a female perspective have been “very, very illustrative to me, wonderful, beautiful.” He said people in his position with a platform to make change have a have a responsibility to increase diversity. “Casting is one opportunity for that,” he said, “The key is to open your eyes and look around.”

Nadia Khairat Gomez winner of the Filmlight Colour Award for a music video (Brodka x Igo, DP Mikolaj Syguda), bravely used her acceptance speech to confront the elephant in the room: “In light of the misogynistic article by the festival director, I feel it's really important to address the gender imbalance in our industry. I stand here with gratitude for all the women who paved the path with solidarity, for all female colourists and cinematographers. I hope our male counterparts help foster a safe space for everybody to shine in their talent irrespectively of gender and culture.”

Greg Fisher of Company 3 who took home the theatrical award for Poor Things (DP Robbie Ryan BSC ISC) beating Dune 2, Mad Max Furiosa and Saltburn, was one of the few men to publicly echoed the sentiment: “It is incumbent on men in the industry to do more.”

Dozens of representatives from cinematographer organisations including the BSC, ASC and Women in Cinematography met with Camerimage organisers behind-closed-doors during the event.

The outcome of their meeting, described as being a ‘willingness to cooperate’ on diversity, inclusion and representation will determine the changes the festival will need to make if it is to continue to enjoy the patronage of the industry next year.

Shooting fish in a barrel

For the select exhibitors Camerimage is like shooting fish in a barrel. No other event – not even one in L.A – captures quite as many A-list DPs in a small space for informal conversations for so long.

“Apart from BSC Expo or CineGear where you’ve only got two days and everyone comes to speak to speak to exhibitors all at once, this is the biggest event for us. You can actually have in-depth conversations,” says Carey Duffy, Director of Product Experiences, Cooke. “The flow through here of international cinematographers producing major work is unique. There’s nowhere else like it. So, it’s a great opportunity for manufacturers to engage with them.”

Cooke had hired out space in a separate hotel away from the exhibition to better concentrate guests attention. Its focus this year is on full frame S8s and its range of 1:1 Full Frame Macros. It also continues to educate the market about the /i metadata technology, an optics to post data chain that was several years ahead of its time and is now coming into its own as a means of producing VFX more cost effectively.

“I can’t definitively say that any conversation I have had with a DP at this show has led to them using our lenses on a job but Cameraimage is all about intangible benefits,” Duffy adds. “You might get half a dozen jobs down the road and you might guess that being here is where it all started.”

“It's not at all about selling equipment here,” agreed Alexander Bscheidl, managing director of Hawk’s Paris and Morocco office. “It is about having the time to get to know a DP and for them to take the time to test and handle the kit.

The miniseries Shogun, screening at Camerimage, was lensed by Chris Ross BSC with Hawk class‑X and Hawk V‑Lite anamorphics and VantageOne T1 sphericals. Also shot on Hawk is Young Woman and the Sea (DP Oscar Faura) which screened in competition here.

“DoPs want easy to use tools, simple technology that produces nice skin tones and a cinematic look. They don't need lots of set up time,” says Bscheidl. “Everything has to be ultra reliable.”

“Anamorphic was at one time a technical process, nothing else. Now with cameras like the Sony Venice you just use anamorphic for nostalgic, artistic storytelling reasons. Anamorphic produces a nostalgic look on the digital sensors because the reality is that cameras are now sharp, too glossy for the storytelling most DPs want. We have to work with [DoPs] to make the image more realistic to life.”

Raucous sex comedy Anora, showing in competition at Camerimage, was shot vérité style by Drew Daniels on Kodak 35mm in widescreen anamorphic using vintage Lomo prime and zoom lenses supplemented with Orion optics for low-light situations, such as the night-time car interior shots.

“Where else in the world are you going to get such a concentration of people so dedicated people to the craft?” explained VP Russell Bell of Atlas Lens’ third successive presence in Torun. “At IBC or NAB you’d get a smattering of cinematographers, some resellers and satellite companies but Camerimage  is the most concentrated most direct to consumer place where every interaction is high value. You can have conversations that are in-depth and technical that you don't really get elsewhere.”

The L.A-based vendor started out in 2016 offering the Orion series of anamorphics designed to be more economical than a Hawke or a Cooke. Its second range called Mercury is for full-frame cameras offering a 1.5 squeeze.

Canon, Fujifilm and ARRI which have been stalwart exhibitors in past editions were not present this year citing budget pressures. Exhibitors report that the festival organiser’s wanted double the fee they charge to exhibit and some just walked away instead.

This is another pressure that Cameraimage organiser’s need to consider if the festival is to evolve.

DP to director

Prieto was at the festival showing off his feature debut as a director. It’s an adaptation for Netflix of the novel Pedro Páramo by Mexican writer Juan Rulfo. After decades working with directors like Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon), Ben Affleck (Argo), Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel), Prieto says he felt ready.

“What I've learned working with [Scorsese et al] came in handy. Just observing on set how directors work with actors and how different actors respond to direction. What to say and, as importantly, what not to say and how to give that space to actors.”

Prieto said he had wanted to photograph a film version of the book for years. Having agreed to direct he felt the responsibility of doing both roles was too great.

“That's where I asked Nico if he would shoot it with me.” Nico Aguilar is co-DoP on the picture and has worked as camera-op and shot second unit for Prieto on several occasions. “He was a great help because I could still have my hand in the lighting which was very complicated because of all the night scenes.”

Young talent

In a Leitz-sponsored session aimed at encouraging young talent into the industry, compered by head of comms Seth Emmons, panellists each had to eat chicken wings. The wings got progressively hotter with every question. I kid you not, this could be a new format for conferences.

“You learn the most from your mistakes,” advised Kate Reid BSC (Silo S2, Game of Thrones). “If there’s a big fxxk up then what led to that chain of events? The hard lessons are the best ones. The biggest part of being a DP is often about how you communicate with people. When something hasn’t worked, it has usually not worked on a human level somewhere along the line.”

Let’s hope the festival organiser’s learn this lesson too.

 

White Lion Shines for Red Christmas Shoot

interview and copy written for VMI 

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Fashion brand SHEIN is lining up a Christmas and New Year campaign shot on the Sony BURANO by director and cinematographer Eduardo Fuica.

Eduardo runs boutique agency White Lion specialising in fashion, commercial and digital media for Vogue, Glamour Magazine, Macmillan Cancer Support, Alexandre McQueen and Vivianne Westwood.

“I’ve been wanting to test the BURANO since it was released and this job just seemed the perfect opportunity especially when paired with ARRI Signature Primes and ARRI Trintiy stabiliser,” he says.

The Seasonal themed production featured a lot of red which proved a challenge for cinematographer and camera.

“There was a lot of red,” he says. “The models wore red, the Christmas packaging was red and reflective too. The velvet backdrop was red. It was a bit of a nightmare to be honest. The only thing that wasn’t red was the floor. The challenge was to render skin tones perfectly

“I thought it would be great to test shooting RAW on the BURANO and to isolate the channels. I am pleased to report that the camera was able to hold separate colour channels extremely well. The skin tones rendered from the Signature Primes were beautiful.”

Another attribute of the camera that Eduardo appreciated was its versatility and lightweight.

“We had to share the shooting space in the studio with a photographer on another job,” he explains. “The compact size of the camera helped a lot. It was so easy to manoeuvre on the ARRI Trinity (operated by Alex Kryszkiewicz), on Steadicam (Operator, Tommaso Colelli) and handheld too. It was really busy on set, everyone was rushing around and there was next to no time to set anything up. I was prepared for this and planned to improvise on the fly. Doing this with the BURANO made the process a lot easier.”

BURANO supports the same Dual Base ISO 800 and 3200 as VENICE 2 which Eduardo also used on the job. This means clear images with low noise whether shooting in a brightly lit environments (ISO 800) or in challenging dimly lit scenarios (ISO 3200).

“Myself and Gaffer Tomás Canelas changed the scenarios and lighting conditions three or four times a day including one scene where the main light came from a chandelier so most of the models had a very strong back light. To create and retain the mood, the BURANO held 3-4 stops between the backlight and the fill light.

“My 1^st AC Ferran Guilén was also able to connect the BURANO with the Sony app so he could access all the menus on his phone when the camera was on flying on Trinity.

“We played with the sensor too. We changed the image scan modes from full frame (8.6K) to Super35 (5.8K) with a simple one button push. It was that easy and very fast.

“I also did some basic editing in 8K RAW. I know that was overkill but I just want to try to see how far we could push the files in DaVinci Resolve. I used no proxies and it ran very smoothly.”

VMI supplied the camera package including BURANO, ARRI Trinity and Signature lenses.

“Barry and VMI are just fantastic,” Eduardo says. “I’ve known them for seven years, ever since I was doing my MA in cinematography in London. They’ve always been very supportive. They always open their door for tests.

“For this project they essentially saved the day. We didn’t have a lot of time. For the entire shoot including pre-production and tests we had just four days. In addition to which the client wanted the flexibility to change the creative brief and make sure we captured enough material for TV, online, digital media and outdoor marketing activations. Barry also offered space for testing the lenses . Without that support it would have been impossible to shoot this project.”

 

6G: media should plan for the internet-of-senses

IBC

Developers believe 6G will usher in photo-realistic holographic communication complemented by multisensory extensions - and experiments are already happening today.

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Real-time film scenes shot 280 miles apart, feeling a crunching on field tackle in your living room and live holographic broadcasting - scenarios that could come to pass in less than five years with the arrival of the 6G wireless network.

Each of these concepts has recently been demonstrated using existing technologies as a call to action for media companies to plan ahead.

“The potential is huge now test and create a proof of concept,” says Jessica Driscoll, Director of Immersive Technology at government funded innovation organisation Digital Catapult. “How do we start thinking about AI-powered interactive storytelling, or what does more collaborative art and music production look like? How will multi-sensory experiences enhance storytelling?”

6G will theoretically deliver between 10 times to 100 times faster speeds than 5G with data rates as high as one terabit per second, latency measured in microseconds and an ability to integrate digital and physical versions of the world.

“It’s not difficult to imagine how the football viewing experience might benefit from advances in innovations such as extended reality (XR) and haptics and which may, for the first time, make Match Day a truly immersive experience,” says Valerie Allie, Senior Director, Video Solutions Group, at tech licence developer InterDigital. “The advent of 6G will accelerate significant XR advancements, so now is the time for the sports leagues to think creatively over the next decade about how to offer immersivity to their fan base.”

Initial work on 6G specifications will start with Release 20 of the 5G standard next year with Release 21 expected to be ratified by 2028, in time for commercial 6G network launches in 2030, according to mobile industry standards body ETSI.

That means the 2032 Brisbane Olympics could be the first major event to enjoy the benefits of the next generation network.

“6G has advanced significantly from an industrial agenda standpoint,” says Alain Mourad, Head of Wireless Labs Europe, InterDigital. “There's already commitment worldwide and at standards bodies like 3GPP and ITU.”

Next March, 3GPP (the body which develops mobile broadband standards) will hold its first official workshop inviting members to share their views on the agenda and scope.

“Once the first standards released around 2028 it will take another couple of years before we start seeing some implementations of these specifications and products,” Mourad confirms.

The ITU evaluates and standardises the 6G specifications proposed by 3GPP as IMT-2030. This extends existing services in 5G (IMT-2020) such as Immersive Communication to include a set of new attributes bracketed under the headings Ubiquitous Connectivity; AI and Communication; and Integrated Sensing and Communication.

Together, 6G networks will enable immersive, ubiquitous, and sensory digital experiences on a massive scale. This will make it possible for 6G applications to “sense” their surroundings, and thereby turn the network into “our sixth sense”, according to a report by the consultancy Capgemini.

Towards 2030, telecoms giant Ericsson expects users to be able to experience all day XR, where the XR device would be used as a main device for all our communication, similar to today’s smartphone.

 

[subhead] Dual location performance

The Advanced Media Production (AMP) network, developed by Digital Catapult and motion capture facility Target3D, is the UK’s first interconnected 5G enabled facility. The government funded initiative links studios in London and Gateshead with labs in Belfast, another in Gateshead and an Immersive 5G Lab in Newcastle city centre. It offers compute power, motion capture cameras, volumetric capture systems and 5G connectivity for media and business to experiment with.

Such experiments include ‘dual site performance’ in which a performer in one place has their actions replicated via holographic video in another location or where two performers in separate locations combine to deliver a performance in a virtual platform like Roblox.

“We are interested in pushing forward the potential of real time holographic broadcasting,” says Driscoll.  “What’s interesting is the audience interaction that feeds back into those virtual worlds. For example, if you've got two pop stars, one in the north of England and one in the south, performing together in Fortnite then what's the real-time audience experience and the feedback loop that goes back to the performers? That's something that hasn't been cracked.

“As the performer, you can see people moving (virtually) in the metaverse but you can't really discern individual gestures. There’s a lag in the environment. It’s not seamless. But a completely low latency 6G environment would enable real-time interactions. You could have real-time 360 audio.” She continues, “When there’s no noticeable latency everyone can experience something at the same time. You could have meaningful interactions and very high quality volumetric video and sound that is also personalised. These are things we have barely begun to explore.”

In July 2023, researchers from Abertay University showcased how actors could shoot scenes together in real-time from two different locations (Dundee and Manchester) using a 5G internet connection against a consistent virtual environment. The clear practical incentive is to reduce travel time and cut carbon costs.

“There is the appetite to be able to share talent across different geographies but people’s mindset remains very traditional,” says Driscoll. “Until sustainability becomes much higher up people's agenda, and we insist on travelling to down the carbon footprint then real dual site or multi-site performance won’t take off in the way that we thought it would.”

Electronic arts duo Gibson/Martelli developed a dual-sited performance using motion capture, virtual environments and live music with artists in AMP’s north and south studios 250 miles apart linked by 10GB fibre connection edge-compute capability and local 5G networks.

The goal was to develop a 'playbook' of ideas and techniques to guide others exploring linked performances.

Gibson /Martelli plan to add in more elements, including streaming of the mocap data to remote VR audiences and giving show control to the dancers via mocap gloves and a machine learning toolkit that can recognise specific gestures.

Digital Catapult runs its facilities for all sectors and finds what it calls ‘creative spillover’ where tools, workflows, processes and content from the creative industries like immersive audio, VFX or game engines are applied in more industrial settings.

“We've had interest from the National Grid to create a digital character and from the Royal Navy, to use virtual production techniques to visualise data for submarine operators,” informs Driscoll.

Haptics in the loop

While immersive broadcasting may be in its infancy (and stymied by existing connectivity limitations), sports producers could benefit from 6G roll-out as soon as 2030.

“This next generation of telecoms infrastructure has the potential to profoundly transform how fans engage with topflight sporting events,” says Allie.  “It may even usher in a new era of immersive content that elevates the live match excitement of audiences to a different level.”

It’s possible to imagine VR headsets delivering an immersive experience and giving fans the perception that they are actually in the stadium, no matter where they are in the world. Meanwhile, AR enhances the real-world experience by overlaying digital information onto the physical world.

“What we call ‘immersive video’ is video where the user’s point of view can be adapted with sensation of depths and parallax,” explains Allie. “Doing that relies on a capturing a huge amount of information to generate 3D video in realtime and then to have some viable transmission at scale that could be a deployed on wireless networks.”

Into this mix comes digital sensory experiences.

“Let’s say you are watching the normal 2D sports experience and you receive some haptic feedback on your smartphone or a headset or controller synchronised to the performance no the pitch. When a player touches the ball, the user receives haptic feedback which brings you closer to the live experience.”

This has been demonstrated by InterDigital using 5G connectivity.

The idea is similar to the vibrations game players already get through their console controller. Devices could produce sensations of pressure, texture, or even heat to increase immersion in virtual scenarios. A haptic glove might deliver different sensory responses to individual fingers, the palm, and back of the hand to imitate a more natural tactile experience such as holding an object or climbing a terrain.

“Consider eSports. A gamer plays their favourite sports car race game and shares their gameplay with followers on Twitch. Today’s viewers just get a 2D image of this gameplay. With our layers of immersive video and haptic feedback the remote viewer will be immersed in 3D video and they will feel the exact haptic feedback that the player felt during the gameplay. To do that we carry haptic media signals as an additional track in the bitstream.”

InterDigital has built a platform to test and evaluate immersive video experience from end-to-end with its work being fed into development of MPEG-I.

“The first release of immersive video standards is already available so you can develop and deploy some scenarios today,” Allie says.

AI and Communication

6G is expected to be a AI-native network, AI is embedded in the networking equipment. This will enable the network to learn and manage itself, be more autonomous, and make it cheaper to run.

What does this mean in practice? Driscoll explains, “For example, if I'm broadcasting from the AMP studio into Glastonbury or another city location the idea is that the network infrastructure should be self-optimising and self-organising. It can cope with signal reflections off buildings, weather patterns (rain negatively impacts mobile coverage) or if there’s sudden congestion on the local network. It enables real-time multi-site collaborations and also multi-user collaborations.”

Companies like Nvidia are counting on AI being able to automatically optimise every point in the production process to achieve best performance.  

“AI optimisation will help to figure this out because at some points you won't need a certain amount of capability or capacity or throughput in one location, but you will need it in another. Currently that is very difficult to do.”

Security and resilience

The complexity of working with digital media assets across the 6G network is expected to stretch regulatory and privacy concerns.

An AI-driven metahuman developed by Digital Catapult and Target3D for example used one person's physical body, a second person’s movement data and a third person’s voice. Securing individual IP to be compliant is one issue which 6G could make better or worse.

“The issue of security and resilience has emerged as a lot stronger in IMT-2030,” says Driscoll. “When we were discussing 5G immersive applications there wasn’t such a strong dialogue about security because the applications tended to be discreet, proof of concept, one-offs generally for marketing or research. As we shift to 6G and the promise of mass mobile communication the question is how do you make everything safe?”

Safety features are being built into the 6G standard for chipsets, hardware protocols and software stack in the hope that security will be more robust.

Once bitten

Promises were made to operators that investments in 5G would deliver groundbreaking experiences like VR which they would be able to monetise. Yet many have yet to see any return on that investment and VR/AR or XR applications have failed to take off.

Current cellular technology is blamed as being too slow to manage the high data rates and the level of latency required to stitch augmented and virtual reality together in real time.

“6G’s latency and speed enhancements will answer these issues,” says Philippe Guillotel, a scientist investigating machine learning for video processing at InterDigital. “There will be the opportunity to offer new experiences that create more value for audiences, but understanding how people will use and interact with digital environments will be key to 6G’s success.”

His colleague is more circumspect. “Operators are taking a more pragmatic approach to investment because there are multiple technology enables already in 5G that have not been deployed yet or because there is no business case yet identified,” says Mourad. “But it doesn't mean that in the next couple of years as 5G matures that these will stay on the shelf. We are already seeing advanced use cases pick up with XR being one of them.”

 

Behind the Scenes: How sound and vision get under the skin in Nickel Boys

IBC

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Re-recording Mixer Tony Volante and Cinematographer Jomo Fray explain how they told a drama from the perspective of its lead characters.

Staying true to the format of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 best-selling novel, director RaMell Ross has shot Amazon/MGM feature Nickel Boys in a first-person point of view, presenting a unique challenge for sound design and dialogue mix.

Inspired by real events, the story follows two African American boys, Elwood and Turner, who are sent to an abusive reform school called the Nickel Academy in 1960s Florida. Because the of the strict POV design, we rarely see the protagonists’ faces so the sound - both heightened and naturalistic - takes precedence.

Tony Volante, the lead re-recording mixer and co-supervising sound editor worked with re-recording mixer Dan Timmons to create the final Dolby Atmos mix. They previously teamed on Ross’ Academy Award-nominated documentary Hale Country This Morning, This Evening (2018).

“What made this specific project special was RaMell’s choice to shoot Nickel Boys predominantly in first person perspective,” Volante says. “This would bring the soundscape to the forefront of the primary characters' emotional storytelling.”

There were numerous discussions with Ross about how to generate concepts for presenting the first person perspective artistically and authentically through sound. Throughout most of the film it is quite obvious visually to the viewer who is in first person, but there are a number of exceptional moments when you think you’re not in first person until midway through a scene. That’s when the sound moves with the camera catching every detail and you realise you are the camera.”

By creating a specific dialogue sound in the mix for the ‘camera’s’ voice through added ADR breathing and unique dialogue treatment, the viewer is immersed in the world in front of and 360 degrees around the camera. Moments like these are what keeps pulling the viewer back to the first person POV. 

“Creating a sonic perspective that would accurately and entertainingly portray the first-person point of view was a unique challenge for the dialogue mix. Initially, I began mixing the POV voice mono/centre while panning the other dialogue and world around it.

This sounded quite nice, but wasn't really different from how I usually approach a traditional film mix. For Nickel Boys, we knew we wanted the first-person POV to have a unique sound relative to the rest of the dialogue in the film. The POV voice needed its own ‘space’ that separated it from the film slightly, but also subtle enough not to distract the viewer/listener out of the film.”

Their concept was to pull the voice slightly off the screen and hover it within the camera/viewer position. To begin the process, Volante started by creating a wider soundscape for the POV voice while monitoring in Atmos.

“This sounded good in Atmos, but down mixes did not capture the dialogue effect accurately,” he recalls. “It wasn’t going to be possible to do completely separate first-person dialogue treatments for all the different mix formats, so I wanted to absolutely make sure the stereo mix would accurately portray the POV.

“To come up with the POV sound, I made the decision to monitor in stereo with my Neumann NDH20 headphones. When mixing with headphones, I can more accurately hear the spatial differences—the proper amount of reverb and stereo imaging—that sometimes get masked within the mixing room’s acoustics.”

He experimented with various plug-in image settings to discover which ones sounded best. After listening to how these would upmix in 5.1 and Atmos, uses the one that also translated the best across all formats.

“Hearing how the effect translated from stereo to up mix rather than the more traditional approach of starting big and checking how it ends up down mixed in stereo, ultimately proved a more accurate approach.”

Dialogue editor, Michael Odmark, created a set of tracks containing all the first-person POV dialogue. This allowed a customised spatial treatment during the mix for those particular clips.

“It was clear early on in the process that the POV clips needed to start as a stereo image before adding any additional treatment,” says Volante. “I added a slight stereo spread plug-in to the chain of these clips, followed by an upmix plug-in to spread the dialogue to multiple channels, including the surround channels.

“Some scenes needed a little extra spatial enhancement, so I added a reverb send for the POV that was used sparingly for an enhanced 3D ‘in your head’ effect. Despite having an immersive configuration that worked for most of the film, I discovered that minor tweaks were required throughout the mix depending on location or quality of the voice recording.” 

Production Sound Mixer, Mark LeBlanc recorded some production sound with a stereo/MS microphone during photography. There are many moments in the film where these recordings were used to enhance the spatial environments and capture a natural stereo spread of the background voices at Nickel Academy, further enhancing the POV perspective.  

“I love panning, so this film was a dream to work on,” says Volante. “All dialogue in the film was panned to accurately portray the POV. Even the slightest off-centre image, dialogue is panned, following the characters throughout the scene.”

Timmons used a similar technique for SFX and Foley mixing, panning not only hard EFX and Foley but also unconventionally shifting the background pan viewpoint to enhance the POV camera motions.

Volante says his colleague’s sound design during the ‘White House’ punishment scene is a highlight in the way of immersing the viewer into Ellwood’s POV. The viewer doesn’t see his beating but sound conveys the brutal whipping while black and white archival footage is shown. 

Source music also played an important role in portraying the first-person narrative. Special care in panning was used throughout on the music tracks playing out of a radio or from a record player. Panning was, needless to say, very active during this mix.  

The dynamic score, by Scott Alario and Alex Somers, was delivered in stereo stems. Volante says, “For music, especially for a movie like this, I prefer stereo stems to 5.1 stems since I can be more precise with the panning and channel placement. I like catching movement on screen and panning components in time with the score. Using the stereo stems, I was able to create spatial movement inside scenes, which further enhanced the sensory experience of the first-person POV.”

The feeling of sight

Cinematographer Jomo Fray played an intimate role in adapting the story. “From the first time I read the script I saw every single moment in the movie in a first-person perspective,” he says. “We constantly asked ourselves how could we manipulate traditional film language to work from a sentient perspective.”

By this, he means images that don’t just convey what is being seen from the point of view of the protagonists but how they are feeling too.

“I feel like the promise of cinema is the ability to walk in another person’s shoes. To feel what it’s like to be another human on Earth. What’s so unique about this film is that it truly does invite you into being in the body of a young black boy during the ‘Jim Crow’ years.”

He is referring to laws introduced in the Southern States that enforced racial segregation, ‘Jim Crow’ being a pejorative term for an African American.

“I want this film to invite you into living concurrently with them and their thoughts and their feelings as they move through the world.”

The technique they evolved was to shoot long takes to maintain a flow of camera with actor and to capture details to transition in and out of scenes. These details or inserts as Fray calls them include a deck of cards being shuffled and a gold bracelet.

“Inserts are the visual idea of the things that our mind remembers after an event that are more fragmentary, but still are a part of that memory,” Fray explains.

“These details became really important to us, not only for the edit, but also to try to describe the experience of sight,” he says, “the way that sometimes we hyper-fixate on things especially in moments of inhumanity.”

“After a car crash people rarely remember the impact itself as if our brain deletes the memory. There’s some aspect of that that feels tied to trauma. We tried to build in that kind of camera language throughout the film as Elwood tries to interpret what has been a very traumatic experience for him.”

Fray shot on a Sony Venice with Panavision large-format spherical primes often in shallow focus and with a 4:3 aspect ratio throughout. The format helped integrate archival collages of American history including the moon shot program of the late 1960s and black and white stills of Black children who may have endured the same treatment over the years.

“For me, the use of archive felt like a cascading of thoughts so using 4:3 was a way of trying to lessen the artifice and immerse the audience into that,” he says.

Combining a 4:3 aspect ratio with shallow focus was also a means of articulating the feeling of sight. “Humans have an incredibly wide field of view but our experience of looking is of our brain forming selective focus on where we look. Our brain will perceive something to be in focus whereas everything else is out of focus.

“RaMell and I wanted to capture that feeling of selective focus and of the way that the brain then puts together meaning in what we see. Hopefully, we are inviting the audience to not just see through these boy’s eyes but be in their thought process.”

Of the lens choice he says: “The way that they shot volume felt really special. Especially for a movie like this, where you’re seeing from the eyes of a character, it’s really important to have a sense of presence about the relationship between the camera’s eye and the rest of the space around you.”

Fray recalls a moment in production when Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (playing Elwood’s grandmother) has to give Elwood some devastating news. “As we were shooting that scene, I’m thinking as Elwood and I found it really hard to look her in the eye. When I’m hearing her start to say something that I know is painful for her to have to say, my camera’s gaze drifts away.

“There was a moment of silence and Aunjanue did something unscripted. She put her hand out and she said, ‘Elwood, look at me son’. As an operator, I had to look back. I had to meet her gaze. After that take that, we all understood with clarity why a sentient perspective is so interesting.

“It isn’t just that the image is inside the scene, it’s that the image itself has to respond and react to the vulnerability that the actors are giving. There’s just such a deep intimacy that is created here not only for the viewer, but even for us as operators. As an operator you compose in a different way someone is acting as a mother and physically hugging you as a mother. That changes how you think of composing the scene.”

In one scene set at a bar, an adult Elwood meets a former inmate from Nickel. Daveed Diggs, the actor playing older Elwood suggested to Fray that he open up the right side of his shoulder to allow the other character to come into shot. He then suggested that he close his shoulder when Elwood starts feeling isolated by the conversation. Doing so pulled the secondary character out of the frame.

“It was co-authoring back and forth,” says Fray. “As the cinematographer, I was invited to connect and feel like a partner to the actors. There are also shots where the actors were invited to have a sense of co-authorship of the image. How they moved their body fundamentally changed the image.”

This is particularly the case for scenes set around 2010 which depict the older Elwood. To convey this the camera is mounted on the actor themselves using a rig called a SnorriCam. It was positioned to keep the back of their head in shot with the effect of giving the character, decades on and still traumatised, a feeling of disconnect with his younger self.

“The effect is what I call a second person perspective which is being able to see yourself in space but with a slight dissociation with yourself that just felt right for how trauma is remembered.”